The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Saturday, March 14, 2009

In this new century, the "West" is no longer a matter of geography. The West is defined by societies committed to freedom and democracy. That at least is how the terrorists see it. And if we are serious about meeting this challenge, we would expand the only military alliance committed to the defense of the West to include those on the front lines of this war. Since 60 years and more, Israel is at the forefront of the struggle against terrorism!

This episode will serve to widen the gap between academic and political opinion on the question of Israel. At the elite colleges that educate the ruling class in America, taking a vocal and passionate pro-Israel stand is risky business. It is getting just as difficult to be pro-Israel in academia and on campus as it is to be anti-Israel in politics. This gap is unhealthy, and in order to explain the gap between academic and political opinion, people are resorting to narratives that imperil the respect for the Jews that has long made the American diaspora experience unique, even if these accusations are only intended to shame factions within the Jewish community. The cause of a Jewish state in Israel is one that young Jews were educated by smart and loving people to take seriously and are told by serious minds to abandon.

Obviously, there is an Israel Lobby, but we need to be especially careful with this term. Here's is why-- it is not a thesis that can be disproved, it is not testable. The Israel Lobby thesis is the most incendiary, and bold, idea to be uttered by the American foreign policy establishment in years. It puts forth the possibility that everyone who is pro-Israel is actually being held hostage.

WE ARE CREATING A WORLD WHERE ALL PRO-ISRAEL STATEMENTS, BY POLITICAL OFFICIALS, MEDIA OUTLETS, AND THE ACADEMY CAN BE INTERPRETED AS HAVING THEIR ORIGINS IN FEAR OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY. WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN THIS WORLD?

I trust that the realists and Mearsheimerites do not. I trust that most Americans or moderate members of the Professoriate do not. Existential enemies of Israel, be they on the far intellectual left or in the Muslim nations, would welcome this state of affairs.

The scandal of the Freeman affair, was that the Pro-Israel Community was screwed either way. He basically said, "Zionist Jews control American foreign policy." And then Zionist Jews said, "We really do not like it when people say that." Then, Freeman said, "look! I told you so!."

How can Freeman at once say, "no one is allowed to say so," and then... say so? What I find shocking about this entire discourse on Israel is the way that the smartest anti-Zionists simultaneously propagate their views through the most efficient technologies ever created, get their books published at the most respectable publishing houses, speak freely in the most prestigious universities, and still insist that they are silenced. They are so used to being beleaguered that they cannot see that they have largely crippled or muzzled the pro-Israel zeal in the next generation of highly educated Jews.

Perhaps some words from Mr. Churchill can remind us why the formation of the character of the next generation of Jews needs to be on the mind of those who care about America in 2050. If your goal is the complete secularization of America and the abolition of the nation-state, like Mr. Chomsky, the best thing you can do is continue to tilt the young Jew's messianic impulse away from national goals and towards international and secular goals. This is best accomplished through publicly and privately shaming those who publicly declare themselves to be Zionists.

Freeman was a casualty of a larger war-- the struggle between those who seek to preserve the nation-state and those who are not loyal to the national idea. Freeman's glorification of Mao and admiration for Islamic illiberalism made him a traitor to the national idea.

One of the source of America's greatness is that we were not hit as hard by the tidal wave of materialistic Marxism in the second half of the 20th century. The commitment of our Jews to Zionism inoculated some of them from commitment to international socialism in the 20th century -- a disease that Jews, especially impoverished ones from eastern Europe, are unfortunately and understandably, prone. Today, young Jews are similarly prone to the temptations of public atheism and aggressive secularism. Zionism, and public deference for it, can inoculate them to these new threats to liberty-- if you indeed agree with Madison and Tocqueville that religion is good for democracies. You cannot blame even the most nefarious Israel Lobbies or neocon cabals for disloyalty to this national idea.

America and Israel are and remain staunch allies in opposition to the anti-nation-state politics of the UN, the European left, the Berkeley campus left, and the at times philotyrannical imagination of Chas Freeman.

That said, this is still a sad day for intellectual freedom. All freedom-loving people, including Americans, a few PLO members, Israelis, and Chas Freeman on his good days, should be disturbed by the limitations placed on those who seek public office.

Yet, character assaults are not as bad as the physical assaults, lynchings, and knee-breaking to which young Fatah members are currently being subjected for insinuating that Israel might not be the physical incarnation of Satan, as they are now educated to believe. Perhaps Obama and Clinton, who apparently read Itamar Marcus' http://www.pmw.org.il/ weekly, can figure out how to bring peace to this embattled region.

Dr Daud Abdullah, deputy director-general of the Muslim Council of Britain advocates attack on foreign navies if they halt arms smuggling

One of the UK's most influential Islamic leaders, who has helped counter extremism in the country's mosques, is accused of advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it tries to stop arms for Hamas being smuggled into Gaza.

Dr Daud Abdullah, deputy director-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, is facing calls for his resignation, after it emerged that he is one of 90 Muslim leaders from around the world who have signed a public declaration in support of Hamas and military action.

Abdullah, who led the MCB's boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day, was a member of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, the body endorsed by the government that trains imams and was set up to curtail the activities of extremist clerics. In January, he briefed the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and communities secretary Hazel Blears on the situation in Gaza and its likely impact on social cohesion in the UK.

There were calls last night for the government and the MCB to condemn Abdullah's actions. "The British government should stop funding organizations such as the MCB and supporting events such as Islam Expo, which hosts scholars from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who hold extremist views," said Irfan Al Alawi, international director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism.

"If the MCB is serious about tackling extremism, it should immediately expel extremists such as Daud Abdullah from its own ranks," said Ed Husain, co-director of the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think tank. "The man is a fanatic."

Abdullah's name appears as a signatory to a declaration in Istanbul last month that describes Israel's recent military campaign as "the manifest victory which Allah has granted us in the land of Gaza". It opposes the "so-called Arab peace initiative" and the Palestinian Authority and issues a series of obligations to the "Islamic Nation", calling on it to "carry on with the jihad and resistance against the occupier until the liberation of all Palestine".

Obligation six declares that Muslims must seek to open the crossings in Palestine so that "money, clothing, food, medicine, weapons and other essentials" can enter Gaza and Palestinians "are able to live and perform the jihad in the way of Allah Almighty".

It warns: "The closure of the crossings, or the prevention of the entry of weapons through them, should be regarded as high treason in the Islamic Nation, and clear support for the Zionist enemy."

The most contentious obligation instructs Muslims to attack foreign navies. In January, Gordon Brown offered Royal Navy resources to help monitor events in Gaza and to stop weapons being smuggled into the territory.

But, according to the Istanbul declaration, there is an obligation for "the Islamic Nation to regard the sending of foreign warships into Muslim waters, claiming to control the borders and prevent the smuggling of arms to Gaza, as a declaration of war, a new occupation, sinful aggression, and a clear violation of the sovereignty of the Nation". It continues: "This must be rejected and fought by all means and ways."

Husain accused Abdullah of "betraying the Palestinian people". He added: "As well as potentially endorsing terrorism against British troops, Abdullah shows total disregard for human life."

A spokesman for the MCB, which says it speaks for about 400 mosques and Muslim organisations, declined to comment. Abdullah did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

Two other prominent British Muslims ' names also appear as signatories to the declaration: Mohammed Sawalha, an organizer of Islam Expo, the huge annual gathering of Muslims in east London, added his name to the list; and Sheikh Rashid al-Ghannoushi of the Tunisian an-Nahdhah party, who resides in the UK, also signed.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Communities and Local Government said: "We are aware of the conference held in Istanbul last month and are very concerned that the statement from the event calls for direct support for acts of violence in the Middle East and beyond. We are also aware that a senior member of the MCB may have been a signatory to this statement. If it is proven that the individual concerned had been a signatory, we would expect [the MCB] to ask him to resign and to confirm its opposition to acts of violent extremism."

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Ambiguous statements made by Pres. Shimon Peres in Parliament on 18th November last, during his recent visit to Britain raised many an eyebrow, being interpreted as a way of thanking Britain for its smooth rule of Palestine starting in 1917, and ending in a regional catastrophe in 1948.

Here is one of them: "The State of Israel began to take shape as Great Britain, under the leadership of Winston Churchill, saved the world from the Nazi threat. It was a time when many countries closed their gates to Holocaust survivors. The nascent Jewish state was alarmed."

It sounds as if the gates of Palestine were open, at least during Churchill's rule, which is not the fact. While a narrow doorway was to remain open until 1944, Palestine's gates were kept locked by the British and forced open by Jewish resistance.

History teaches that Britain turned its back to the obligations it took at the end of World War I to assist in building a Jewish National Home in Palestine, which resulted in the loss of Britain's position in the Middle East (ME) and the perpetuation of hostilities in the area.

As a covert operative of Hagannah'sMossadLe'Aliyah who sailed in "illegal", rusty, over-crowded outfits called ships and operated in Europe, Egypt, Palestine and Cyprus against the British blockade during 1945-47, my experience contradicts Peres's rhetoric elegance.

Britain's pro-Zionist stand ended in 1922. The implementation of the November 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration, whereby Britain assumed the task of facilitating the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, was sanctioned by the League of Nations in 1922, the year Britain's pro-Zionist Prime Minister Lloyd George was demoted. The task of assisting the Jewish ingathering became the charge of the Colonial Secretary and of the Army who were anything but pro-Jewish.

Starting in 1916, Britain's Sikes, with France's Picot in tow, carved out a multitude of Arab states from the disintegrating Turkish Ottoman Empire. The encouragement of (pro-British) Arab nationalism was a by-product which collided with the support of Zionism. General Allenby's Intelligence Officer, Col. Richard Meinertzhagen, CBE, DSO, provides a vivid description of the British drift away from its assignment in his book Middle-East Diary 1917-1956 (The Cressed Press, London, 1959). The restriction of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the relative freedom of Arab migration and the tolerance (incitement?) of Arab violence especially in 1921 and 1929 when the mass murder of Hebron's Jews took place, were part of the British "support" of Zionism.

In 1933, when Hitler's Nazi Germany started its bestial persecution of German Jews, no country in the world offered a life saving political asylum to the hundreds of thousands of refugees pleading for shelter to avoid perdition. Britain released a paltry 50,000 extra entry permits beyond the meager immigration quota to Palestine, the designated "Jewish National Home". The ones stranded in Europe, were condemned to death.

It is in these circumstances that the MossadLe'Aliyah was formed in 1934 by the Hagannah to rescue Jewish refugees forcing the locked gates of Palestine. The Revisionist Movement and private, often greedy organizations contributed to the flow before and during WWII. Between 1934 and 1948 when the MossadLe'Aliyah was relieved of the task, about 115,000 "illegal" immigrants reached Palestine. In May, 1948, when Israeli independence was declared, about every fifth Jewish citizen was an "illegal" immigrant. 3,000 perished during or about their sailing. That is 3%. More, percentagewise, than Britain's total losses during the Second World War.

In May 1939, in accordance with the Chamberlain policy of appeasement, Britain gave in to Arab terrorist demands and issued a "White Paper" reneging on its pledge to support the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Jewish immigration and land purchase were to stop while the borders with the Arab countries were open for Arab migrants looking for jobs created by the Jews (The 1950 UN definition of Arab refugees was "Arabs who resided in Palestine for at least two years").

Churchill attributed the White Paper to the British government's impotence: "....I must say that I have not taken such a low view of the strength of the British Empire...." Lieutenant-Commander Fletcher's words were explicit: "I think what we have seen in the White Paper is another instance of how the government gets out of their difficulties by sacrificing the easiest victims. The government are now joining in the hunt of the Jews which is going on in Europe. Last year, to get out of a difficulty, they did not hesitate to sell the Czechs down the river. This year we see them prepared to sell the Jews down the river." Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, commented on Malcolm MacDonald's speech supporting Chamberlain: "I should have had more respect for him and his speech if he had frankly admitted that the Jews were to be sacrificed to the incompetence of the government in the matter, to be sacrificed to its inability to govern, to be sacrificed to its apparent fear, if not indeed, its sympathy with violence and these Arab methods of murder and assassination." (Emphasis added. Note that there were no "occupied territories" at the time)

Ben-Gurion's answer to the White Paper was: "Let's fight the Nazis as if there were no White Paper and the White Paper as if there were no Nazis". Over 30,000 Jews volunteered and joined the British Armed Forces. Almost 7% of Palestinian Jewry (what percentage in Britain?). The others ran the civilian War Effort. When Rommel reached El Almein in 1942, the Jewish settlement in Palestine remained the only trustworthy British ally in the Middle East. Arabs became restive. Some mutinied.

It was expected that Britain, which bore the shame of the Chamberlain leadership in 1939, would, in post WWII circumstances, declare the White Paper obsolete and adopt a different stand, realizing that it became, by omission, an accomplice of the Nazis (see above Fletcher and Morrison), having prevented the escape of deathbound refugees.

Unfortunately, the British government did not change tack. The Atlee-Bevin Labour government kept the gates locked and suggested that the surviving refugees who fled their horrible past and communist future be returned, if necessary by force, to the countries of their families cemeteries, which the allies refused.

On the 22nd of March, 1945, after the fate of war has been decided, Britain created the Arab League to provide support of its post-war ME policy. It deployed about 100,000 military personnel in Palestine, one for every five Jews, be they kids or aged, to force Jewish compliance.

But the rusty, downtrodden Mossad embarkations carried the day against the Royal Navy. Bankrupt Britain was entirely dependent upon US aid and the US supported Jewish immigration to Palestine so as not to be forced to open its own gates. Britain was forced to return the mandate of Palestine to the newly established United Nations, which decided to establish two states in Palestine, one Arab and one Jewish. The Jews agreed. Pan-Arabia, by now the Arab League, British trained and equipped, in some cases British officered, did not. It went to war against nascent Israel and lost miserably. The 1949 Rhodes Armistice should have put an end to war, were not Arab hatred, pride and outside forces to convince pan-Arabia and later Iran that new conventional wars and terror will let them annihilate the Jewish state.

Britain is the engine that drove the Middle East between 1917 and 1950's. It should muster the courage to recognize its responsibility for its past policies and deeds in the area and help dissolve rather than promote hatred. European states were courageous enough to apologise for crimes of commission or crimes of omission committed under duress before and during WWII.

Britain's record in the Middle East, both past and present justifies a thorough soulsearching.

YoashTsiddon-Chatto, Col (ret.), Israel Air Force, was a MossadLe'Aliyah operative in 1945-47. He is a forty-one-year veteran of Israel's defense establishment. An air force pilot, he studied at the French EcoleSupérieure de Guerre Aérienne and eventually retired with the rank of colonel. Mr. Tsiddon-Chatto was a member of the Knesset from 1988-1992 (Tzomet party) and a member of the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference (1991). He has written extensively on policy and security issues in Israel and abroad.

The full horror of contemporary Middle East politics and debate is comprehended by few in the West, largely because they aren't informed by their political leaders, intellectuals, and media.

Occasionally, the truth emerges, as on September 11, 2003, but soon is reburied under mountains of obfuscation. After all, Iran's president called for Israel to be wiped off the map, according to the official Iranian translation, and the New York Times publishes an article analyzing whether this ever happened.

Translator (in English): "He says that justified grievances about American aggression are creating hurt feelings which can only be resolved by Western policy changes."

These thoughts are inspired by at least four examples this week.

FIRST, AN ARABIC-SPEAKER WRITES ME, "Right now I'm watching Himam As-Sa'id, leader of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, on al-Aqsa TV giving a speech (or rather a rant). He's screaming about how the Islamic armies will turn Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews." This is followed by threatening the Jordan government as traitorous for making peace with Israel and "the usual clichés."

But then my friend concludes: "As we all know, this isn't the sort of language the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood uses when speaking English." For good measure, he inserts some links to Western newspaper articles that claim the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood is really a moderate organization with which Western governments should dialogue.

THEN THERE ARE TWO RECENT INTERVIEWS GIVEN BY PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY (PA) AMBASSADOR to Lebanon AbbasZaki, who explains that the PA considers the United States an enemy. Of course, the Americans have been paying Zaki's salary for 14 years through direct aid and by persuading allies to donate money; backed a Palestinian state, and pressed Israel into many concession for the PA. But none of this matters to Zaki and other senior Fatah leaders. In Arabic, they are still hardliners and anti-Americans.

But, the Lebanese interviewer asked, doesn't his boss Abu Mazin consider America to be a friend? He replied: "Well, this isn't true. Perhaps Abu Mazen, in his position, needs to use diplomatic language, but he is the greatest critic of the United States."

If Abu Mazin wants to show that this is false, he need merely discipline or fire Zaki. Of course, he's too afraid of Zaki and the fact that the ambassador represents the mainstream Fatah line to do so — just as he's afraid to make peace or educate Palestinians away from extremism.

In early November, Zaki gave a lecture explaining that moderation was just a pretense and the goal was still Israel's destruction. In his words, given the Arab nation's weakness and U.S. power, "The PLO proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy." Soon it would be in a position to bring about Israel's collapse and drive "them out of all of Palestine."

One of the main examples of nonsense substituting for serious analysis today is the fantasy of splitting Syria away from Iran. This notion is encouraged by Syria's effective propaganda network and lots of Western helpers. A Lebanese friend sends me a boatload of citations from Syrian officials promising eternal loyalty to Iran. I believe them.

For example, Syria's ambassador to the United States explained on al-Jazira television back in May, "Syria will not distance itself from Iran because our ties with Iran are...[linked] to deep historic, cultural, social, and religious ties, common interests."

An article by regime fan Rime Allaf in Novosti press agency on November 25 notes: "For three decades, the Syrian-Iranian relationship has survived a sustained Western effort to break the alliance...and to shift the politics of both regimes." But nothing will weaken this partnership unless the regime in one of these countries falls. Agreed.

The Washington Post's David Ottoway writes of how Syria needs and benefits from the alliance with Iran. But he continues, "Western and Arab sources...feel, nonetheless, that the Syrian-Iranian friendship is unnatural [and] short-term." Syria's regime is thought too secular to stick with Tehran very long. He also, however, provides extensive quotes from Syrian officials who insist — with detailed arguments — that the alliance is here to stay.

Oh, by the way, the article is dated September 29, 1983.

FINALLY, IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND THE CURRENT SPECTRUM OF PUBLIC DEBATE in the Arab world, consider a television debate between Kamal al-Hilbawi, director of the LondonCenter for the Study of Terrorism, and political analyst NabilYassin. The former is supposed to be the radical; the latter the moderate.

Hilbawi endorses killing Israeli civilians, including children, because, he says they're all potential soldiers. He claims, "In elementary school, [in Israel] they pose the following math problem: 'In your village, there are 100 Arabs. If you killed 40, how many Arabs would be left for you to kill?' This is taught in the Israeli curriculum."

Yassin responds by saying he is against murdering civilians: "I condemn the Israeli governments for teaching children such things, but I do not condemn the child, who still doesn't know how he will kill the Arabs in 20 years' time, when he becomes a soldier."

I read that just after helping my two kids with their math homework and I guess I must have missed those equations. Actually, in my daughter's school they're now studying Islam and Christianity, learning a fair, factual picture of both religions.

There are, however, schools that teach that way. What Hilbawi described is an almost precise rendition of Syrian second-grade textbooks, for example, which contain math problems about killing Israelis.

AT ANY RATE, THEIR DEBATE SHOWS US THE PERMISSIBLE MARGIN OF DISCUSSION: The Arab radical lies that Israel is a nation of genocidal killers; the moderate retorts that of course it's true but the children aren't responsible for being brainwashed by those evil monsters.

Certainly, the best Western strategy in today's Middle East is to cooperate with relatively moderate states and groups opposed to the spread of radical Islamism and Iranian-Syrian influence.

The first problem is that many in the West are more interested in courting the extremists in the mistaken belief they'll change.

The second problem is that even those whose objective interests are relatively moderate and parallel those of the West and Israel — even those acknowledging this fact in private — aren't willing to speak and act along these lines.

The third problem is that there are few moderates and that the spectrum of debate is so dominated by extremists and those who pretend to be radical for safety or to exploit militancy for their own advantage.

Oh, by the way, the program in which Arab viewers were told that Israeli schools teach children to murder Arabs wasn't aired on the Hizballah channel but on the BBC's Arabic service. That's quite a service. Incitement to terrorism thanks to British taxpayer money. Political insanity denied can be contagious.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and co-author of "Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography" and "Hating America: A History" (Oxford University Press). His latest book is The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).History" (Oxford University Press). His latest book is The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).

For years, the U.S. State Department has called the Islamic Republic of Iran the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism," For years, U.S. officials say the Islamic Republic of Iran has continued to provide funding, weapons, training, and sanctuary to numerous terrorist groups based in the Middle East and elsewhere, posing a security concern to the international community. And for years, the U.S. Administration has been unable to outdo the Islamic Republic's propaganda machine and clearly has been unable or perhaps unwilling to help the Iranian people to end this nightmare in Iran.

President George W. Bush, of all U.S. presidents, at his annual State of the Union addresses, spoke numerous times about the plight of the Iranian people. He once said, "If the Iranian people stand for themselves, the United States will stand with them." Throughout his presidency, the Iranians, of all people, hailed this courageous president, as an angel of freedom and his popularity was surging in Iran while his approval rating at home was low.

As time went on, President Bush vowed that the Islamic Republic would never be allowed to achieve its goal of developing nuclear bombs during his watch. He kept using all kinds of threats and promises, in order to persuade the mullahs to drop the project, to no avail. When a belligerent end-of-the-worlder, Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad, became the Islamic Republic of Iran's president, things started heating up greatly.

Time and again, the bellicose Ahmadinejad kept vilifying the Great Satan and its sidekick Israel for having the gall to demand Iran abandon its program while his two main adversaries had their own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad informed the world that what the Islamic Republic does is within its own national rights. He shored up his credibility cleverly by dispatching endless series of negotiators to meetings with the Europeans. He was successfully stalling for time, while working around the clock to get to the Surge Capacity.

Iran, under the late shah, launched a plan to achieve "Surge Capacity:" A code word for getting all the ingredients and procedures down pat for making the bomb quickly, short of actually making it; a clever power-play.

A saint and revered man of God, according to none other than Jimmy Carter (who considers himself as another great man of God), the late Ayatollah Khomeini cancelled the nuclear program with the same saintly and prompt edict that he cancelled the life of thousands of Iranians for daring to disagree with his system of medieval Shari'a rule.

In no time at all, the vicious Mullahs gutted the Iranian armed forces and executed many of its most capable officers. Saddam Hussein watched gleefully as the Iranian military disintegrated, and found the opportunity to carry out his Pan Arabism ambition by attacking Iran. Some eight years of barbaric butchery killed and maimed millions on both sides, gutted the vibrant Iranian economy, and visited misery of all sorts upon the Iranian people.

After Khomeini's demise, another mullah much more crafty and ambitious, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, became the president and re-activated the program secretly, while the IAEA watchdog snoozed contentedly on the job. Decades later, some Iranians opposed to the rule of the murdering mullahs finally by-passed the watchdog and showed the world proof positive that the mullahs were racing tirelessly with their scheme of getting the ultimate weapon.

This information greatly alarmed the United States of America and Israel. The revelation seemed to bother no European nation, the Russians, or the Chinese. Somehow these nations figured that they would let the U.S. do all the worrying about the looming menace while they focused on the lucrative business deals they had diligently worked out with the mullahs: something reminiscent of the cozy deal the French and the Russians had going with the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein.

This upcoming January is the 30th anniversary of Islamists holding Iran hostage. Thirty years ago a radical Muslim by the name of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, succeeded in hijacking Iran's 1979 revolution and "promised Iranians heaven, but ... created a hell on earth," turning Iran into a bastion of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. Ever since, tens of thousands of political activists have been killed or imprisoned. Tens of thousands of opposition groups, women, ethnic and religious minorities, have been subjected to inhumane treatment.

Since 1979, this illegitimate fantasy government of the Islamic Republic has been waging a brutal war against the entire population of Iran who has been fighting for individual and religious freedom for many years. Iranians, of all people, have truly come to taste and experience the true fruits of Islam and most of them want to end this barbaric cult of Muhammad in Iran sooner than later.

For the past 30 years, very similar to the "Great Purge," (a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the old Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin) the Mullahs, the agents of terror, have imposed an Islamic cultural revolution by forcing a prolonged indoctrination of Islamic dogma on people of all ages, particularly the young children. The ultimate goal was to "Islamicize" Iran's universities and schools. Regrettably, most Americans are unaware that the same indoctrination of our young children is taking place in the United States, as well.

A Mullah is the principal agent of terror, believing his cause to be the cause of Allah. This misanthrope is the outcome of Islam. He is the result of adherence to the Islamic creed, precisely as codified in scripture. This raw, despicable regime represents the inevitable result of Islam, and its calling card of terrorism is now marching from the Iranian focal point to all parts of the globe.

For the past 30 years, people in the West, especially in the United States, have been on the receiving end of a very sophisticated and convoluted campaign of disinformation and propaganda, dished out by the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and its lobbyist organizations in the U.S. MOIS learned its methodology directly from the Soviet KGB and many of the Islamists who supported Khomeini were actually trained in the old Soviet Union.

In spite of tens of thousands of political executions, other brutal practices and years of a reign of terror, the Islamists have not succeeded in uprooting the nationwide movement for democracy in Iran. In fact, the student-led-uprising of Iranian in Tehran and many other cities clearly revealed that without barbaric and overwhelming use of force, the jihadist regime would not last even a day. In recent weeks, many cities in Iran have been the sources of ferocious anti-government protest but, as always, the western media has ignored reporting it.

A word of caution to the upcoming new U.S. administration: Beware of mullahs bearing gifts! The mullahs are diehard adherents of the Islamists' eleventh commandment "Thou shall not lie or dissimilate (tagyyeh), deceive or cheat (ketman) unless they serve a higher purpose." And to these devoted faithful, there is no higher purpose in the world than serving Allah's bidding, as they like it and as they interpret it. The President-elect must learn from Jimmy Carter's miscalculation on Iran. And former Carter Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is wrong for avidly propagating negotiation with the Islamists in Iran, instead of its rightful owners, the Iranian people.

It would also be wise not to waste the taxpayers' money in the spirit of good will to meet with bloodthirsty Mullahs and their ilk. On the other hand, the Iranian people are asking the world to file legal charges against the leaders of the Islamic Republic for wanton violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The charges would be for their crimes against humanity and genocidal actions against religious and political groups, for support of international terrorism, for demolition of religious sites and cemeteries, for rape, torture, and summary executions of prisoners of conscience, for forgery of documents, for acts of blackmail and fraud, and for much more.

My advice to the President-elect and the people of my adopted country is: go ahead and make merry, enjoy the gift of life, but don't let down your guard and make sure that no one lulls you into the deadly trap of complacency. Yes, if the mullahs get the bomb, they will make use of it in numerous ways. They will use it for blackmail, they will use it in small packages through untraceable proxies, and they might even launch it by their missiles in a homicide-suicide fashion which is their trademark. After all it is the mullahs' deeply-held belief that their cataclysmic act will expedite the coming of the Saheb-ul-Zaman (the Lord of the Age), whence he would set the world on the righteous course while those who have hastened his coming will be immersed eternally in the joys of pleasure in Allah's promised paradise.

Let us pledge for a peaceful world by engaging, supporting and negotiating directly with the Iranian people or their legitimate representatives, not its current enemies, the Mullahs, their quisling-like lobbyists and mercenaries in the United States or elsewhere.

AmilImani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He and his family escaped Iran after the radical Islamic revolution.

Ask one hundred people in the United States what a dhimmi is and perhaps two or three might know. In Western Europe the number would be slightly higher because of latent memories of battles fought against invading Moslem armies over hundreds of years.

In 732, Charles Martel led his Frankish forces at Tours to victory against an Islamic invasion of France, which nearly destroyed Christian Europe. Similarly, Islam was ousted from Spain in 1492 after an occupation of the Iberian Peninsula by the Moslems for hundreds of years. Sadly, the Spanish Christian monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, and the Portuguese a few years later, also expelled the Jewish community although the Jews had lived in Spain and Portugal for many centuries and had never posed a threat to either Moslem or Christian sovereignty.

In Italy, Islamic power was brought to an end when the heavy Turkish galleys were defeated by Venetian galleasses at the great naval battle of Lepanto in 1571. And the Moslem Ottoman power, which at its height again threatened all of Western Europe, was barely turned back at the gates of Vienna on 11 September 1683 by a coalition of European armies. Incidentally, could there be a connection between 9.11.1683 and 9.11.2001, or is it just coincidence?

These were four major defeats by Europe of Islamic attempts of conquest and subjugation set against a history of victorious Moslem invasions and conquests that had been the hallmark of Islam since its founding in the seventh century.

But what of the peoples and nations that fell under Islamic occupation? For them the story was one of forced conversions to Islam, slavery, death and the Islamic institution of dhimmitude.

This is the word that describes the parlous state of those who refused to convert to Islam and became the subjugated, non-Muslims who were forced to accept a restrictive and humiliating subordination to a superior Islamic power and live as second class citizens in order to avoid enslavement or death. These peoples and populations were known as dhimmis, and if such a status was not humiliating enough, a special tax or tribute, called the jizya, was imposed upon them and upon all dhimmis.

Dhimmitude is the direct outcome of jihad, which is the military conquest of non-Islamic territory mandated by Allah as a spiritual obligation for every individual Moslem and Moslem nation.

From its beginnings in the seventh century, Islam spread through violent conquest of non-Moslem lands. In the eighth century, a formal set of rules to govern relationships between Moslems and non-Moslems was created based upon Moslem conquests of non-Moslem peoples. These rules were based upon jihad, which established how the Moslems would treat the conquered non-Moslems in terms of their submission to Islam.

Jihad can be pursued through force or other means such as propaganda, writing, or subversion against the perceived enemy. The so-called enemies are those who oppose the establishment of Islamic law or its spread, mission, or sovereignty over them and their land.

Propaganda and subversion are the very means now being employed against the West and Judeo-Christian civilization, and Islamists have shown themselves to be brilliantly adept at manipulating the gullible and uninformed western media in pursuit of their aims of world domination.

As I have written in previous articles, non-Islamic lands are considered the dar al-harb, the "house of war," until they submit to Islamic rule and enter the dar al-Islam. The 'infidel' falls into three categories: those who resist Islam with force, those living in a country that has a temporary truce with Islam, and those who have surrendered to Islam by exchanging land for peace.

Since the Oslo Accords, successive Israeli governments have been guilty of the now thoroughly discredited notion of "land for peace" in which Israel gives away land but never receives peace. Even the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan are cold at best and the lands given away to Lebanon and the Arab Palestinians has been a calamitous error. The belief that Moslem Arab powers respond to overtures of peace by ending their aggression is but a mirage in the desert. This is proven time and again to be a delusion and is, in fact, a classic example of the mindset and behavior of the dhimmi.

A non-Moslem community forced to accept dhimmitude is condemned to live in a system that will only protect it from jihad if it is subservient to the Moslem master. In return, it is guaranteed limited rights under a system of discriminations that it must accept, or face forced conversion, slavery, or death.

In the early years of the Islamic conquests, the "tribute" or jizya was paid as a yearly poll tax, which symbolized the subordination of the dhimmi. Later, the inferior status of Jews and Christians was reinforced through a series of regulations that governed the behavior of the dhimmi. Jews and Christians were awarded a different status than other faiths. They were considered to be under protection as "people of the book." People of non-monotheistic faiths, pagans, or atheists were simply to be exterminated.

According to Mitchell G. Bard, who has written extensively on the subject and produced the excellent rebuttal to Arab and pro-Arab propaganda in his book, Myths and Facts, "... dhimmis, on pain of death, were forbidden to mock or criticize the Koran, Islam or Muhammad, to proselytize among Moslems or to touch a Moslem woman (though a Moslem man could take a non-Moslem as a wife).

"Dhimmis were excluded from public office and armed service, and were forbidden to bear arms. They were not allowed to ride horses or camels, to build synagogues or churches taller than mosques, to construct houses higher than those of Muslims or to drink wine in public. They were not allowed to pray or mourn in loud voices as that might offend the Moslems.

"The dhimmi had to show public deference toward Moslems, always yielding them the center of the road. The dhimmi was not allowed to give evidence in court against a Moslem, and his oath was unacceptable in an Islamic court. To defend himself the dhimmi would have to purchase Moslem witnesses at great expense. This left the dhimmi with little legal recourse when harmed by a Moslem.

"Dhimmis were also forced to wear distinctive clothing. In the ninth century, for example, Baghdad's Caliph al-Mutawakkil designated a yellow badge for Jews, setting a precedent that would be followed centuries later."

By the twentieth century, the status of the dhimmi in Moslem lands had not significantly improved. H.E.W. Young, British Vice-Consul in Mosul, wrote in 1909:

"The attitude of the Muslims toward the Christians and the Jews is that of a master towards slaves, whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed."

The concept of jihad is not something now discarded by Islam as a quaint belief appropriate to the distant past. On the contrary, it is a cardinal belief in the 21st century for Moslems based upon Koranic injunctions. It is believed in by millions of Moslems around the Third world, as much as by Moslems living in America, Britain, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. It is a belief, passionately held, that one day the entire world will become Islamic and accept completely the will of Allah.

It is vital, therefore, that the general public in every non-Moslem country be made aware that Moslems consider themselves in a perpetual state of war with their non-Moslem neighbors. If Islamic armies are unable to defeat what they consider the "infidels," (that's you and me), then a period of "truce" exists, which has several conditions. These include allowing Islam to be propagated, and if a non-Moslem nation forbids it or rejects mass proselytizing to Islam, then that nation will be considered as subject to holy jihad.

Sheikh Zayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaida's second in command, recently invited America to embrace Islam. The invitation is always given, according to some experts, prior to a major assault upon the "infidel nation," because any rejection is considered by Moslems as an empirical reason to wage war upon the non-Moslem state; in this case the United States of America.

It is nearly impossible for sophisticated and secularized Western and European elites to understand or accept such medieval concepts, let alone the idea that a religious war is being waged against them. But their dismissal and amused disregard of what is taking place is as calamitous as that exemplified by the myopic politicians in Britain and America before the Second World War.

The lone voice in the wilderness at that time, Winston Churchill, appealed in vain to the political leaders who had not the ears to hear or the eyes to see the growing fascist menace during the 1930s posed by Germany and Italy. He called one such British politician an "epileptic corpse," and reached back through his prodigious memory to find a poem, which characterized the failure of the Baldwin government in 1935 to re-arm. The apt poem was The Clattering Train, which could equally be applied to the later appeasement of Hitler by Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax.

"Those in charge of the clattering train, the axles creak and the couplings strain. The pace is hot and the points are near and sleep has deadened the driver's air. The signals flash in the night in vain, for death is in charge of the clattering train."

Western notions of peaceful co-existence between states, human rights and liberal democracy are all alien to the bin-Ladens and Zawahiris of the Islamic world. Hizbullah, Iran's president, MahmoudAhmadinejad, Hamas, Al Qaida, ad nauseum, all reject Judeo-Christian civilization as being in theological error. For them, the entire human race must embrace Allah's pre-eminence and the Moslem believer is the divine instrument to bring about the "Umma" (worldwide Moslem community) in whatever way possible, including warfare and terror.

Jihad has reappeared as a way of wiping out the humiliation the Arab and Moslem world has felt as Western power became ascendant, especially after the defeat of the Ottoman Turkish Empire at the end of the First World War.

With a fabulous and never ending flow of petrodollars pouring into Arab and Moslem coffers, the belief among Moslems is that the time is now right for Islam to reassert itself in dominating the world and bringing it to Allah through all out war, including nuclear war, if necessary.

The corollary to jihad is dhimmitude. This is what appeasement by non-Moslems to Islamist threats and terror leads to. Winston Churchill would have been shocked but not surprised at the craven appeasement displayed by today's elitists in the European political echelons.

It is in marked contrast to the manner in which their ancestors confronted an earlier existential Islamic threat when they defeated decisively the Moslems at Tours, Iberia (Spain and Portugal), Lepanto and Vienna.

But without a similarly decisive defeat of present day Islamist aggression and Islamo-fascism we may all be faced, sooner than we think, with the choice of forced conversion to Islam or subservience and wretchedness as dhimmis.

Better, therefore, for us all to be aware of the facts and not also be dummies.

Victor Sharpeis a freelance writer with articles and essays published in FrontPageMag. com, Townhall. com, Outpost, the Wall Street Journal, the London Daily Telegraph, Israel Alert, Jewish Review and other publications.

In his excellent article "Iran's strategic nuclear deception", Craig S. Karpel argues that Iran's threats against Israel are a smokescreen designed to lull the West into a false sense of security regarding her true aims:

Most Europeans and Americans are not keenly aware that Iran is on track to having the ability to threaten KuwaitCity, Riyadh, Dubai, Istanbul, Athens, Rome, Berlin, Paris, London, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles with nuclear weapons. They are oblivious to the ultimate aim of the Iranian nuclear weapons program: to transform Iran into the dominant global superpower by enabling its regime to attain hegemonic control of the petroleum production of all of the Gulf region's oil states, while preventing the West from taking military action against Iran by deploying missiles that can obliterate Western cities. Instead, Americans and Europeans are under the impression that the program's main goal is the destruction of Israel…

The stream of invective calling for, predicting, and/or gloating in advance about the elimination of Israel constitutes one of the most effective strategic deceptions in history. Tehran has succeeded in minimizing Western concern about Iran's nuclear weapons program by making it seem to be somebody else's problem. –Karpel, "Iran's strategic nuclear deception"

There's no doubt that it's Iran's goal to become "the dominant global superpower" as Karpel says. And the West in general and the US in particular seem remarkably unconcerned as the noose tightens. But it looks more like Western self-deception than Persian trickery.

It seems to me that Iranian leaders, like Hitler, have made their intentions clear long in advance. And (also like Hitler) they intend to destroy the Jews by conventional means.

Karpel lists several threatening statements made by Iranian leaders against Israel, suggesting that they are nuclear threats. But all of them refer to the Palestinians as the instrument of Israel's destruction and only one even mentions nuclear weapons.

One is Khamenei's 2000 statement in which he described Israel as a "cancerous tumor" in the Mideast. Here is Khamenei's threat:

"Palestinian refugees should return and Muslims, Christians and Jews could choose a government for themselves, excluding immigrant Jews…

He praised the 11-week Palestinian uprising against Israel, in which more than 320 people have been killed, mainly Palestinians.

"The new Palestinian generation has learned that struggle is the way to victory, not negotiations," Khamenei said, referring to the deadlocked U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace process.

Ahmadinejad said in his remarks Wednesday that the issue of a Palestinian state would be resolved only when Palestinians took control of all their lands.

"The establishment of Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," he said, according to the press agency. "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of the war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land."

Referring to comments by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, Admadinejad said, "As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

"Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

"Today the reason for the Zionist regime's existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation," he said.

Ahmadinejad added that Israel "has reached the end like a dead rat after being slapped by the Lebanese" — a reference to the July-August 2006 war between Israel and the Shiite Hezbollah militia.

"The Zionist regime has lost its raison d'etre. Today the Palestinians identify with your name (Khomeini), your memory and in your path. They are walking in your illuminated path and the Zionist regime has reached a total dead end. Thanks to God your wish will soon be realized, and this germ of corruption will soon be wiped off the face of the world."

"A Zionist organization with 2,000 [members] and with 7,000 or 8,000 activists has brought the world to a state of confusion. Let me tell them that if they themselves do not wrap up Zionism, the strong arm of the peoples will wipe these germs of corruption off the face of the Earth."

Even Rafsanjani's 2001 statement that includes this "…the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam" also refers to the Palestinians:

Rafsanjani said that it is unlikely that the Palestinian Jihad will weaken. He explained that the Palestinians have come to the conclusion that talks [with Israel] are effective only along with struggle and self-sacrifice – the two key elements that gave way to the second Intifada. The Palestinian Jihad is the mother of many Islamic movements, ranging from the [1979] Islamic Revolution in Iran to Islamic movements in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Central Asia, and many other Muslim states. All these Islamic movements support the Palestinian Jihad and have not forgotten it. The Palestinian Jihad has its roots in the homelessness of five million people. Undoubtedly, [this Jihad's] culmination will be the liberation of Palestine.

Now this is not to say that Israel ought not worry about Iranian nuclear weapons, because they clearly could be used against Israel, both directly and as blackmail.

But the characterization — by the West, not by the Iranians — of the threat as primarily a threat against Israel and therefore not a serious danger to Europe and the US is very wrong.

Iran wants to destroy Israel for several reasons.

It is an outpost of and possible military base for Iran's primary enemy, the US, in the Middle East.

Israel is one of the few issues guaranteed to unite all Muslims, and championing its destruction allows Iran to obtain influence even with Sunnis, such as Hamas.

Israel sits in the most strategic spot in the Eastern Mediterranean, an area in which Iran wishes to project its power.

Ahmadinejad may have religious reasons for wanting to eliminate Israel.

But nuclear weapons, while useful, are not essential to the Iranian strategy against Israel, which is based on Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria (with its massive stockpile of non-nuclear missiles, some of them with chemical and biological warheads).

Nuclear weapons are essential, however, for the strategy against the US and the West that Karpel outlines. And this explains the willingness of the Iranian regime to expend huge sums of money — to the detriment of its population — as well as expose itself to the possibility of military attack from a cornered Israel.

Unfortunately, the US is behaving toward Iran very much as it behaved toward Hitler's Germany in the late 1930's, pretending that, after all, the worst that can happen is that somebody else will be hurt. Perhaps Karpel should have titled his article "Our strategic nuclear self-deception".